Close to Home (25 page)

“Shit,” said Annie, getting to her feet. She had remembered the task that had been eluding her all evening.

“What?”

“Just something I should have checked out before.” She looked at her watch and waved good-bye. “Maybe it's not too late. See you later.”

 

Michelle sat back in her seat and watched the fields drift by under a gray sky, rain streaking the dirty window. Every time she took a train she felt as if she were on holiday. This evening, the train was full. Sometimes she forgot just how close Peterborough was to London—only eighty miles or so, about a fifty-minute train ride—and how many people made the journey every day. That was, after all, what the new town expansion had been about. Basildon, Bracknell, Hemel Hempstead, Hatfield, Stevenage, Harlow, Crawley, Welwyn Garden City, Milton Keynes, all in a belt around London, even closer than Peterborough, catchment areas for an overflowing capital, where it was fast becoming too expensive for many to live. She hadn't been around back then, of course, but she knew that the population of Peterborough had risen from about 62,000 in 1961 to 134,000 in 1981.

Unable to concentrate on
The Profession of Violence,
which she had to remember to post back to Banks, she thought back to her lunch with Ex-Detective Inspector Robert Lancaster. He had quite a few years on Ben Shaw, but they were both very much cut from the same cloth. Oh, no doubt about it, Shaw was ruder, more sarcastic, a far more unpleasant personality, but underneath they were the
same kind of copper
. Not necessarily bent—Michelle took Lancaster's word on that—but not above turning a blind eye if it was to their advantage, and not above fraternizing with villains. As Lancaster had also pointed out, he had grown up shoulder to shoulder with criminals like the Krays and smaller fry like Billy Marshall, and when it came to future career choices it was often very much a matter of “There but for the grace of God go I.”

It was interesting what he had said about Graham Marshall, she thought. Interesting that he should even remember the boy at all. She had never considered that it might have been Graham's
own
criminal activities that got him killed, and even now she found it hard to swallow. Not that fourteen-year-olds were immune to criminal activity. Far from it, especially these days. But if Graham Marshall had
been involved in something that was likely to get him killed, wouldn't somebody have known and come forward? Surely Jet Harris or Reg Proctor would have picked up the scent?

The real problem, though, was how she could gather any more information about Graham. She could go through the statements again, read the investigating detectives' notebooks and check all the actions allocated, but if none of them focused on Graham himself as a possible line of inquiry, then she would get no further.

The train slowed down for no apparent reason. It was an InterCity, not a local train, so Michelle went to the buffet car and bought herself a coffee. The paper cup was far too hot, even when she used three or four serviettes to hold it. If she took the top off, it would spill when the train started moving again, so she tore a small hole in the plastic top and decided to wait a little while till it cooled.

Michelle looked at her watch. After eight o'clock. Getting dark outside. She had spent a couple of hours shopping on Oxford Street after parting with Lancaster, and she felt a little guilty that she had spent over a hundred pounds on a dress. Perhaps she was turning into a shopaholic? Like the drinking, the spending had to stop. She'd never get a chance to wear the damn thing anyway, as it was a party dress, elegant, strapless and stylish, and she never went to any parties. What could she have been thinking of?

When the train started up again half an hour later, with no explanation for the delay, Michelle realized that if Graham had been involved in anything untoward, there was one person who might know something, even if he didn't know he did:
Banks
. And thinking of him made her once again regret the way she had left him at Starbucks the other day. True, she had resented his intrusion into what she regarded as her private life, a life she kept very guarded indeed, but she had perhaps overreacted a tad. After all, he had only asked her if she was married; a perfectly innocent question in its way, and one you might ask a stranger over a coffee. It didn't have to mean anything, but it was such a raw nerve point
with her, such a no-go area, that she had behaved rudely, and now she regretted it.

Well, she wasn't married; that was certainly the truth. Melissa had died because she and Ted got their wires crossed. She was on surveillance and thought
he
was picking up their daughter after school; he had an afternoon meeting and thought
she
was going to do it. Possibly no marriage could survive that amount of trauma—the guilt, blame, grief and anger—and theirs hadn't. Almost six months to the day after Melissa's funeral they had agreed to separate, and Michelle had begun her years of wandering from county to county trying to put the past behind her. Succeeding to a large extent, but still haunted, still in some ways maimed by what had happened.

She hadn't had either the time or the inclination for men, and that was another thing about Banks that bothered her. He was the only man, beyond her immediate colleagues on the job, with whom she had spent any time in years, and she liked him, found him attractive. Michelle knew that she had been nicknamed the Ice Queen at more than one station over the past five years, but it had only amused her because it couldn't be farther from the truth. She was, she knew, deep down, a warm and sensual person, as she had been with Ted, though that was a part of her nature she had neglected for a long time, perhaps even suppressed, out of punishment, being more preoccupied with self-blame.

She didn't know if Banks was married or not, though she had noticed that he didn't wear a ring. And he
had
asked her if she was married. In addition to being an intrusion, that had seemed like a come-on line at the time, too, and maybe it was. The problem was that part of her wanted him, against all her common sense and all the barriers she had built inside, and the result flustered and confused her almost beyond bearing. Banks might be one of the few people who could help her reconstruct Graham Marshall's past, but could she bear to face Banks again in the flesh?

She would have no choice, she realized as the train pulled
up and she reached for her briefcase. Graham Marshall's memorial service would be taking place in a matter of days, and she had promised to call and let him know about it.

 

It was almost dark when Banks turned into the laneway that ran in front of his small cottage, and he was tired. Annie had left by the time he got back to headquarters after finishing his beer, so he stuck around for an hour or so picking away at the pile of paperwork, then decided to call it a day. Whatever it was she was after, she'd tell him after the weekend.

Memories of Luke's postmortem hovered unpleasantly close to the surface of his consciousness, the way past cases also haunted him. Over the past few months, he had dreamed more than once of Emily Riddle and of the partially buried bodies he had seen in a cellar in Leeds, toes poking through the dirt. Was he going to have to add Luke Armitage to his list of nightmare images now? Was there never any end to it?

Someone had parked a car, an ancient clapped-out Fiesta, by the looks of it, in front of the cottage. Unable to get past the obstacle, Banks parked behind it and took out his house keys. There was no one inside the car, so it wasn't a pair of lovers seeking seclusion. Maybe someone had dumped it there, he thought, with a flash of irritation. The dirt lane was little more than a cul-de-sac. It dwindled to a riverside footpath when it reached the woods about twenty feet beyond Banks's cottage, and there was no way for a car to get through. Not everyone knew that, of course, and sometimes cars turned down it by mistake. He ought to consider putting up a sign, he thought, though he had always thought it obvious enough that the track was a private drive.

Then he noticed that the living room light was on and the curtains closed. He knew he hadn't left the light on that morning. It
could
be burglars, he thought, moving carefully, though if it was, they were very incompetent ones, not only parking in a cul-de-sac, but not even bothering to turn their
car around for a quick getaway. Still, he'd known far stupider criminals, like the would-be bank robber who had filled out the withdrawal slip with his real name before writing on the back: “Giv me yor munny, I've got a nife” and handing it to the teller. He didn't get far.

The car was definitely a Fiesta, with rusted wheel arches. It would be lucky to pass its next MOT without major and expensive work, Banks thought as he gave it the once-over and memorized the number plate. This was no burglar. He tried to remember to whom he had given a key. Not Annie, at least not anymore. Certainly not Sandra. And just as he opened the door, it came to him. There was his son Brian stretched out on the sofa, with Tim Buckley playing low on stereo: “I Never Asked to Be Your Mountain.” When he heard Banks come in, he uncoiled his long length, sat up and rubbed his eyes.

“Oh. Hi, Dad, it's you.”

“Hello, son. Who else were you expecting?”

“Nobody. I was just half asleep, I suppose. Dreaming.”

“Don't you believe in telephones?”

“Sorry. It's been a bit hectic lately. We're doing some gigs around Teeside starting tomorrow night, so I thought I'd, you know, just drop in and say hello. I had a long drive. All the way from south London.”

“It's good to see you.” Banks gestured with his thumb. “I'm surprised you made it in one piece. Is that pile of junk out there the car you borrowed two hundred quid off me for?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I hope you didn't pay any more than that for it, that's all.” Banks put his car keys down on the low table, took off his jacket and hung it on a hook behind the door. “I didn't know you were a Tim Buckley fan,” he said, sitting down in the armchair.

“You'd be surprised. Actually, I'm not, really. Haven't heard him much. Hell of a voice, though. You can hear it in his son's. Jeff's. He did a great version of this song at a me
morial concert for his dad. Most of the time he refused to acknowledge Tim, though.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Read a book about them.
Dream Brother
. It's pretty good. I'll lend it to you if I can find it.”

“Thanks.” Mention of the Tim and Jeff Buckley relationship reminded Banks of Luke Armitage and the tape he still had in his pocket. Maybe he'd get Brian's opinion. For the moment, though, a stiff drink was in order. A Laphroaig. “Can I get you anything to drink?” he asked Brian. “Drop of single malt, perhaps?”

Brian made a face. “Can't stand the stuff. If you've got any lager, though…”

“I think I can manage that.” Banks poured himself the whiskey and found a Carlsberg in the back of the fridge. “Glass?” he called from the kitchen.

“Can's fine,” Brian called back.

If anything, Brian seemed even taller than the last time Banks had seen him, at least five or six inches taller than his own five foot nine. He had inherited Banks's constitutional thinness, by the looks of him, and wore the usual uniform of torn jeans and a plain T-shirt. He'd had his hair cut. Not just cut, but massacred, even shorter than Banks's own close crop.

“What's with the haircut?” Banks asked him.

“Kept getting in my eyes. So what are you up to these days, Dad? Still solving crime and keeping the world safe for democracy?”

“Less of your lip.” Banks lit a cigarette. Brian gave him a disgusted look. “I'm trying to stop,” Banks said. “It's only my fifth all day.” Brian said nothing, merely raised his eyebrows. “Anyway,” Banks went on. “Yes, I'm working.”

“Neil Byrd's son, Luke, right? I heard it on the news while I was driving up. Poor sod.”

“Right. Luke Armitage. You're the musician in the family. What do you think of Neil Byrd?”

“He was pretty cool,” said Brian, “but maybe just a bit too
folksy for me. Too much of a romantic, I guess. Like Dylan, he was a lot better when he went electric. Why?”

“I'm just trying to understand Luke's relationship with him, that's all.”

“He didn't have one. Neil Byrd committed suicide when Luke was only three. He was a dreamer, an idealist. The world could never match up to his expectations.”

“If that were a reason for suicide, Brian, there'd be nobody left alive. But it had to have a powerful effect on the boy. Luke had a bunch of posters in his room. Dead rock stars. Seemed obsessed with them. Not his dad, though.”

“Like who?”

“Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Ian Curtis, Nick Drake. You know. The usual suspects.”

“Covers quite a range,” said Brian. “I'll bet you thought your generation had cornered the market in dying young, didn't you? Jimi, Janis, Jim.” He nodded toward the stereo. “Present company.”

“I know some of these were more recent.”

“Well, Nick Drake was another one of your lot. And do you know how old I was when Ian Curtis was with Joy Division? I can't have been more than six or seven.”

“But you have
listened
to Joy Division?”

“I've listened, yeah. Too depressing for me. Kurt Cobain and Jeff Buckley are a lot closer to home. But where's all this going?”

“I honestly don't know,” said Banks. “I'm just trying to get some sort of grip on Luke's life, his state of mind. He was into some very weird stuff for a fifteen-year-old. And there was nothing in his room connected with his father.”

“Well, he'd feel pissed off, wouldn't he? Wouldn't you? Only stands to reason. Your old man does a bunk when you're just a baby and then offs himself before you can get to know him at all. Hardly makes you feel wanted, does it?”